I'll start work on the swingarm bolt when all the crucial stuff is done. I can just lay the bike on its side in the garage and lay the PB Blaster to it, for weeks if need be. I have an air chisel with blunt drift bits... if I can work the thing back and forth in a sea of penetrating oil, maybe something will come of it. I'm not holding out for an easy job of it though. I don't believe the bike spent much time in the desert, but was in the southeastern USA most of its life... humid summers and frequent mud on the trails, not to mention PO's pressure-washing the bike, blasting water into the bearings and bushings.

I recently redid my SA bolt. It siezes on the hardened steel sleeves in each side of the swing arm....AND in the two steel bushings pressed into the rear of each crankcase half. I ended up drilling the bolt to get the heads off, then with a lot of frikkin around the engine with the SA will come out of the frame....then I slashed the swing arm up leaving the bolt and the two bushings stuck on....then a die grinder (Dremel or bigger) to split the hardened bushings...they actually break easy....THEN heat the remainder of the bolt and whack it back and forth in the rear of the engine to get it moving. Dr Lewall's discourse on the operation is essentially the bible.

my opinion is the water that rusts it in place comes thru the gap between the SA and the rear of the crankcase

It is also my opinion that as long as your swing arm moves smoothly, even though the bolt won't budge....leave it be

Yeah, too bad there's no easy way to renew the pivot hole. I once worked on a friend's '82 Yamaha XJ650 Maxim, and its brake pedal pivot had a grease fitting. Handy. Doing so may have cost Yamaha a dollar. Too bad the bean-counters win when it comes to these things nowadays.

I took the rear suspension link and shock loose today (with the exception of that pesky swingarm), greasing everything with Mystik JT-6 Hi-Temp waterproof grease. All the pivot bearings were in remarkably good shape considering this bike's heavy use. Honda must have actually greased those parts on assembly.

My '87 XL250R has factory-installed grease fittings on those pivots, but it appears the bean-counters won when the final design for the XR4 hit the CEO's desk.

I was wanting to install a grease fitting for every pivot, but then realized I'd never be able to drill through the bearing races. The link, shock, dogbone, and associated parts in which the zerk fittings themselves are installed are cast aluminum... no problem. But for the grease to be able to get into the bearings themselves, a hole would have to drilled into the races, which are hardened steel, which would merely laugh at my drill bits. So I simply slathered grease on everything and reassembled. (Sigh)

I do like the XR4's removable subframe. That makes it a lot easier to access things back there. My other trail bikes, XL250 and DR250, don't have removable subframes, and it gets to be quite a puzzle to get things in and out of there.